Well,
so much for THAT bogus group: Warren J. Rodgers - the founder died
on October 25, 2014 at age 57 of unspecified causes. His obituary,
complete with reference to the bogus group he claimed to head, is found
here. While we don't mourn the loss of those whose egregious
behavior insults the fraternity of Freemasonry, we're glad at least that
he came into that large inheritance he bragged about so as to provide
for his family (see below). We recognize that they
may now grieve and so extend our condolences
to them.

Before this happened, though, that $150,000 Homestead website (WHAT? See below!)
was taken down but that's ok because you can see most of it at
archive.org. Another FAR less comical site is
herebut
based on the domain name, it may only be a matter of time
before that domain owner realizes she's never going to get paid and
removes it. Perhaps if there really were any members
to this ostensible worldwide organization with 96,000 members
they'll now be able to come up with $15 for a real domain name.
After all, they have money, they've bragged: "WERM does not solicit
donations or dues from its individual members because the order has its
own “money” saved from the beginning of time to now for funding good
works for the betterment of man world wide." We'll see what happens
next! We hope too that the deceased head of US operations (or, perhaps more likely,
the creator of the fantasy world) as a multi-millionaire has
remembered the group in his will. It was
odd that their 'primary' site seemed to disappear just a couple of days
after this page went live. It came back for a brief time as we
documented even more absurdities but then the domain name was lost and
they've apparently convinced some poor unsuspecting soul that there'd be
a huge payout for the new site which requires a login that doesn't go
anywhere. Hard to prance and prattle when you've got just three
repetitive pages on the web - and what about all of their members?
Well....

And we'll always regret that Mr. Rodgers passed away without ever
knowing that when he called one of the Grand Lodges in which I hold
membership to whine about his treatment
on this website that the voice he heard on the answering machine saying
"Our office is closed right now but if you'd please leave your name,
number and a brief message we'll get back to you just as soon as we can."
was MINE!

This page will remain as a testament to the foolishness one finds on
the internet.

And we'll be looking on eBay for
fancy neck scarves, a gold-plated collar and funny headwear!

Here's their claim:

THE WORLD EGYPTIAN RITE MASONS OF
THE 97 DEGREE are a secret Masonic order run by Warren Rodgers 33/97 based
out of Pontiac,mi.and EGYPT and in 37 states , 16 country's.

{The above was written by their leader, Warren Rodgers himself
(as you can see if you follow the link
here - you'll need to expand the answer of "Jeff", his middle and
sometimes nickname <ROFL>) with grammatical and spelling errors left intact.}

They also claim:

THE WORLD EGYPTIAN RITE MASONS ( WERM ) IS A SUPER SECRET FRATERNAL ORDER
BASED ON A SYSTEM DEVELOPED BY THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS CALLED THE " MYSTERY
SYSTEM ". (Note
for later reference: NO claim is made that they're a religion!)

On this page
there was the claim that they have 96,000 members worldwide. Pretty amazing,
isn't it? Of course, this was even more amazing since they
claimed to take in 7 new members each year - and from another page, there
was a claim of only 800 members. Of course, they
also claim that they've been around since long before the Grand Lodge of England
in 1717 (they're supposedly Egyptian, after all!!!). They can also be seen bragging that "WE
ARE NOT FREEMASONS, WE ARE MASONS. FREEMASONRY CAME FROM THE TEACHINGS OF OUR
ORDER. WE ARE THE FATHERS OF FREEMASONRY. WERM MASONRY HAS ALL THE SECRETS OF
THEIR ORDERS,THEY HAVE NONE OF OURS." Yeah, right! Thousands of
historians have just missed this: amazing! And that's ok - because this section
is about "Fake Masonry" in all its many permutations!

There
was
also an article on their now gone website ostensibly written by an "Alan Scott"
(who,
surely coincidentally, has the same spelling and capitalization problems as Mr.
Rodgers) which tells of the amazing good fortune to befall Rodgers. Obviously,
any new millionaire would want to be circumspect about his new-found wealth,
particularly when he was on the brink of financial disaster - according to the
story. Perhaps not surprisingly, this story wasn't reported anywhere else.... However,
this is just wonderful for the WERMs: because of Mr.
Rodgers' largess, ostensibly, the
WERMs claim that they don't ever charge anyone dues or
membership fees. Of course, they've got a
website set up to
have people pay dues (and, it would seem, there have actually been people putting
money in there - though one might assume that the anonymous dues payers aren't
really anything but the site owner trying to 'prime the pump'....). You'll note
too that there's a donation of $75 from Martin MacLorrain and not long afterwards, he
was named a "Grand Master" for the Southeastern United States. In fact, several
mentions of him were made on their now defunct website where his name was spelled
differently almost every time! He must be SO proud....

Further, there's
no explanation for how the WERMs funded themselves before May of 2013 when this
remarkable inheritance occurred. Did they just get the 96,000 members AFTER that
- at the rate of 7 per year? Must be my math isn't too good and surely there's
an explanation somewhere, eh? 14 Attorneys too: heck, did you EVER hear of 14
attorneys coming from all parts of the country to sit in a room waiting to meet
with someone who they didn't even know was available for an appointment??? Maybe
that's the way they do things in Detroit but I doubt it. Oh, and a BLACK "old
New York banking family"? REALLY??? (One correspondent suggested that a
mixed race marriage might be involved but really: do you really believe ANY part
of this story???)

The WERM website talks about delivering food to a (perhaps
conveniently unnamed) African country and then going there armed to supposedly force some
warlord to release it to the people under threat of harm to himself and family -
oh, and ostensibly carrying a letter from 'our government' (which might have
been the
United States based on the story) but
not knowing what was in it. Yeah, right!
Read "WHAT
WERM EXSPECT'S WHEN WERM SENDS FOOD TO AFRICA ?"
for a hearty laugh (starting with the misspelled title, of course!). It was
removed from the site (before the site was removed) but the Internet Archive can
regale you with Rodgers' bragging
about arming themselves and staring down warlords. I wonder if anyone can
produce a passport showing travel for this - or if they'll just claim that it was some sort of
'secret mission' and they didn't need such things. Yeah, right!

Oh, and with adding only 7 members a year and the under
$1,300 online fundraising, they're ostensibly
building a USD $9 MILLION dollar building. Curiously, no mention of this can
be found in any of the Pontiac newspapers that we could locate. Perhaps someone
could show evidence of this somewhere - if the project isn't similar to
the building that Sirius
Lodge claimed they were building.... It was supposedly on hold
but with Rodgers' death, perhaps we will see notice of project abandonment since
he seemed to be the only member in Michigan - but more than likely, there'll be
no mention since there was no such project - except in Rodgers' fantasies.

I would be remiss if we didn't note that Mr. Rodgers was also at
one time apparently involved with the Frank Ripel organization and has been
disowned by them. (Read WAY down on the page
here.) He's even created a
full web page to castigate Mr. Ripel - in an interesting case of the pot
calling the kettle....

Oh, and Mr. Rodgers ALSO claimed "...so
the person who wrote i was was connected to a bunch of non main stream
freemasonry groups was right and that i was connected to 16 other non main
stream groups and just two main stream groups." (and will sell you his book so
you can learn more). He also writes"I WAS A 33RD DEGREE IN MAINSTREAM FREEMASONRY
WORKING FOR THE SUPREME COUNCIL AND DIDN'T KNOW ALL THIS ?"
We would have LOVED to see some
proof of this ludicrous claim
since Mr. Rodgers' name doesn't seem to appear ANYWHERE in the records of EITHER
the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction (in whose jurisdiction he apparently
resided all his life - pictures of the Proceedings in which all 33rd Degree
Scottish Rite Masons are shown) or the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite. (He
never mentions this in his work history on Linkedin, not that he would have to,
of course - but we wonder what a fellow who claims that he's been a 'Master
Builder' for his entire career was doing working for them. In looking through 'class pictures' for a couple of
decades, he's simply not shown so perhaps someone can point us to copies of the pages in which
his name and photo appeared (or even cite the year and page number) for his
being nominated and then, in the following year, receiving
his recognition on his website??? That would be a GREAT way to
show how we misjudged him. (And just for the uninformed: there are NO
'secret' 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Masons made - PERIOD!)

IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ - As we've
noted in describing other groups on this site which use the name 'Mason/Masonry'
or the trappings of the regular/recognized world of Masonry/Freemasonry, there is
nothing in the world to keep you from joining whatever group you want. If you
feel you'd like to be part of this organization with a leader who can't spell
and whose claims are - to us at least - laughable, knock yourself out. Just
don't EVER expect that you'll be acknowledged by the millions of other Masons
(or Freemasons, certainly)
worldwide. Then again, according to Mr. Rodgers, you shouldn't want to!

And we doubt you'll find more than a handful (if that many) of
the ninety-six thousand other members of this group - but don't let us stop
you from trying! We're not being cyber-bullies here, folks (a common whine when
someone doesn't have a leg to stand on and one which Mr. Rodgers used when the
spotlight of truth was pointed at him): we're simply pointing out the FACTS.
This is a group that claims to be "Masons" - and they're not talking about the
kind that'll build you a fireplace 'cause those men and women don't have or use
numerical degrees after their names or dress up in colored robes, bizarre
headgear, and fancy bejeweled aprons - so if they're not 'fake (free)masons',
then what the heck do you suppose they are??? Can anybody name a religion
(outside of WERM in some of their more bizarre claims, of course) that has a
numerical degree system? Anyone???

One final warning too: if you want to join the group's
priest training,
you must be circumcised. (Sorry: that link's gone also - thankfully!) Be forewarned.... <chuckle> See the entry under
1/11/2014 for more exciting expectations.

April 2,
2014 and updated with links from Archive.org in June, 2014. Updated noting more
proclivities in October, 2014 with his death notice added November 9, 2014.

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